The Dubai World crash of a month ago is still troubling the world’s financial markets. Dubai World is an investment company owned by and run for the country of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai World was hailed as one of the wonders of the world not so long ago, having major investments in real estate and finance in many countries, and by building hotels, golf courses and terrascaped artificial islands in the Gulf. A world class airport and a projected fleet of the giant Airbus A380 planes was designed to make Dubai a major center for trade and commerce, and a destination for the world’s traveling rich and not so rich. All this came crashing down on November 26 when Dubai World reneged on its debt to the tune of 26 billion dollars. Stock markets around the world developed major jitters as investors saw their money disappear into the Persian Gulf. People never learn that what goes up must come down.

 

 

Investors happily took the plunge

Into the Dubai World

Absorbing losses like a sponge

They now cry “goobye World”

Expecting governmental help

Like Obie gave his friends

With hotels sinking in the kelp

They surfaced with the bends

So now they’re holding both the sack

And mounting debt to pay

And all without a Freddie Mac

Or helpful Fannie Mae

 

 

Hi, Nostradamus here, with another set of delightfully accurate quatrains! It’s all truth, all the time, here at verse-afire. I see much confusion as people wonder who they can believe, climate scientists who cook the books or their own lying eyes. As for the Maya, well, their prediction for the end of time was made fifteen hundred years or so ago, safe enough, for they’d all be long dead. Obviously I am not dead, and stand by my vision of the future. And the future, as I see it, is very short term. Dang! The Maya were right. The market in green bananas is headed for the toilet. 

 

 

The Power sees if they could die

Embracing full the warming lie

Reducing populace to beggin’

At summitry in Copenhagen

 

Fierce run winds and snow and ice

In a geologic trice

For just eleven thousand years

Fomenting global cooling fears

 

The people write it down in stone

And keep it for themselves alone

They know men will no longer delve

For it will end in 2012

 

 

President Obama’s approval numbers are dropping fast, and people are beginning to carp and grumble. Just because the man has only been in office less than a year and already our foreign policy is in shambles and domestically we’re in a very steep economic decline, with trillions spent with virtually nothing to show for it but staggering debt, and all his attention and effort is spent trying to destroy the best health care system world has ever seen doesn’t mean the man isn’t trying. He’s doing his best, his best is just not good enough. During the campaign Hillary Clinton insisted Barack Hussein Obama was unqualified to be president of the United States. She was right, and we all knew it at the time, but he’s here now, and I say we cut him some slack. It isn’t his fault he got elected.

 

 

I can’t stand this carping

Why are we still harping

On things that Obama can’t do

Like solve global warming

Prevent summer storming

Deliver a speech in Bantu

Let’s give the man credit

‘Twas wise man who said it

To suffer a fool is a crime

He thinks we’re all fools

For handing the tools

To a man such as he at this time

So cut him some slack

Let’s cover his back

The country’s in very best hands

Don’t mind that the past

Is catching up fast

With the hour glass running the sands

 

 

President Obama is off to Copenhagen to jump-start the flagging UN effort to destroy western civilization, a thing apparently dear to the president’s heart. The leaked emails and memos from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have shown the climate scientists hiding the data that contradicted their falsified alarms about global warming, preventing skeptics from publishing in journals and otherwise behaving like wise guys engaged in criminal activity. Which they were. The question is, was this a conspiracy or just mission bias, an innocent commonality of belief. I believe the question has been answered: conspiracy. A conspiracy by the radical environmental Left to return the western world to the 12^th century, when the world, they believe, was a better place and the inhabitants thereof a nobler people. A conspiracy of dunces with PhDs. This whole Global Warming thing has been a snow job from the very first. Or as Al Gore was reportedly heard to exclaim, “Kyoto today, tomorrow die Welt!”

 

 

Snow when seen from inside home

Glistens white and lovely

Until you put on boots and cap

And then it becomes shovely

The AGW stuff’s like that

It looks good from a distance

But when you get up close to it

You sure do find resistance

To everything the science guys

Who really should know better

Are doing to their science just

To get that grant fund letter

Is there a big conspiracy

Or just a mission bias

Do they believe in what they say

Or are they just big liahs

Break down the word conspiracy

And feast your eyes upon

The last part that says piracy

The first part that says con

 

 

We’re getting down to crunch time. Obama is twisting arms as only a Chicago pol knows how, demanding the Democrat Senate come out with a health care bill by Christmas. Some nervous Democrat Senators have been bought off, some have been threatened, the public option and expansion of Medicare have been taken out, and still they don’t have the 60 votes. But never underestimate the ability of the Left to destroy that which they touch. The Democrats are bound and determined to destroy the best health care system the world has ever seen, replacing it with a government run system complete with death panels, bureaucrats who will determine whether or not your grandmother should have that operation, with money better spent on someone younger, someone more likely to vote for those who promise free lunch and ice cream. But what if it isn’t your grandmother the bureaucrats are deciding on? What if it’s you? If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the rest of the gang get their way, there will be many doctor/patient scenes like this:

 

 

Now then my man, what have we here, the doc said with a smile

Just what can I do for you today?

The man said firm and brisk and clear, I’ve had this little while

A problem that won’t seem to go away

Aha, I see, the doctor mused, while glancing at his chart

I see you have some trouble on your hands

There is a drug that may be used, and yes, I cross my heart

I’d use it now, except it’s just for glands

And so I fear there’s naught be done, the government says no

Your liver cancer must now run its course

If not for that you’d live another five, six months or so

But government is still the money source

I see the man said getting up, I know I’m not the first

Who wants to live his life a bit too long

The pain you know’s not letting up, this liver is the worst

And living six months longer is no song

It’s just that I would like to do a few things that I’d missed

Like climbing Mount McKinley and the like

And there may still be one or two sweet girls I have not kissed

And crossing old Death Valley on my bike

I know the government knows best, knows what is best for me

I thank my lucky stars that Harry Reid

And Nancy and Barack and all the rest can clearly see

That what they want is what we mortals need

So I’ll go home and pack my bags and get my good suit cleaned

And try to smile and hope for all the best

And I will know that my toe tags will read Death Panel Screened

Before they sent me to eternal rest

 

 

The Pakistani government has just poked a stick in President Obama’s eye. They have declared in contemptuous tones that they will not arrest, interrogate, interfere with, or disturb in any way the Afghan terrorist most wanted by the United States, one Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani Network. Haqqani has been responsible for the deaths of US soldiers, among many other terrorist acts. He walks around freely in Pakistan, where he is protected by the Pakistani government. At some point the United States may simply go into Pakistan and arrest or kill him, and if we do that it will initiate a crisis with the Pakistani government, who are not truly on our side. When, not if, Pakistan goes Taliban, there will be a crisis of epic proportions, joining the approaching crisis vis a vis Iran. Two crisis points – Iran and Pakistan, Pakistan now and Iran soon to be nuclear powers. How will these crises be resolved? In a few days there will be Christmas. Some two thousand years ago a light in the sky guided wise men from the East to a rude manger. One day wiser men than we may see another light in the sky, and perhaps they will follow it. But what will they find when they get there? A manger? Or a blackened cinder?

 

 

The Paki sky is dark with man-made birds

The night is deep the starlight weak and faint

The valley floors are hidden as the words

Of far off voices track the radar paint

At thirty thousand feet the UAV

Commanded from a half a world away

Banks slightly and as silent as the sea

Prepares to turn the night sky into day

Across the world at airdromes near the Med

Six pointed stars are reaching for the sky

In minutes now some millions will be dead

As Persian missiles hurl aloft to fly

The world has reached the point of no return

As hydrogen and science both combine

Producing star-like temperatures to burn

So bright that wiser men will see the sign

And follow that bright star to see a child

Once born and born again defying time

To save the worlds His creatures have defiled

And set for them His selfless paradigm

He knows some heed His words and some do not

He knows the joys and sorrows that will flow

As creatures He has made forget the plot

And think that they alone can run the show

And when they do the skies above grow dark

As man-made birds prowl everlasting night

Igniting fierce-flared fire from the spark

That one day shows some wiser men the light

 

 

The Global Warming gang is hunkering down and riding out the storm, denying there is anything to see in the CRU leaked emails and memos. Will this work? Will the politicians and the media and those in line to make hundreds of billions of dollars from the scam succeed in making it all go away? Will soothing words and earnest and sincere entreaties to Trust Us save the day? Will the Global Warming gang succeed in destroying the economies of the western world in general and the United States in particular? Will we all feel better when everything the West has built and worked for these past three hundred years is given to the Third World kleptocracies? Well, foreign crooks may not get everything. Al Gore will get his share.  

 

 

Of all the words with CRU

What comes to mind is crud

And from the first the skeptics knew

That squeezing stones for blood

Was easier than getting those

Who manufactured lies

To say which data sets they chose

That proved the world wide rise

In temperatures on this fair Earth

Would lead to fatal cause

Like rising seas and earthquake birth

And shark attacks from Jaws

And meteors and melting ice

Volcanoes and the like

And much too much of things not nice

And breaches in the dike

While monsoon rains would flood the land

And drown both kith and kin

And rising tides drove all to stand

On high ground ‘mid the din

Of hurricanes of fiercest blows

Destroying homes and shrubs

While polar bears faced thinning snows

To raise their cute white cubs

But fear thee not the gurus said

We have a plan that works

Without us you would all be dead

Not knowing danger lurks

We’ll put a tax on CO2

In every breath you take

We’ll charge you for the carbon too

In everything you make

But here’s the thing, you can evade

The punishment du jour

By simply sending checks that paid

To us and to Al Gore

A simple sum that will allow

You carbon credits for

Just anything that me and Al

Have stocked up in our store

What’s that you say, we’ve cooked the books

Whatever can you mean

Just ‘cause the data’s gone and looks

Suspicious and obscene

You must not think that we would lie

For that would be uncouth

We swear to you, both Al and I

That warming is the truth

 

 

The Chinese, the world’s number one polluters, have told the Global Warming delegates in Copenhagen that they will not be bound by nor will they abide by any carbon emission restrictions set up by the UN or anybody else, but will take their share of the trillions of dollars of Western money the UN is eager to transfer to those less fortunate, or less able, or less honest. China therefore puts the whole thing squarely in cynical perspective: the UN is run by the Third World kleptocracies and thugocracies, all of them eager to suck at the golden teat of Western wealth, and they have seized on the Global Warming scam started by Al Gore and his friends to get it. Since the earth is currently cooling and not warming, maybe cooler heads will prevail and Al and the rest of the scam artists will be put in jail.

 

 

The Chinese are a clever race

They say they’re all ‘bout saving face

And so they’ll never tell a lie

Not even kidding on the sly

They say upfront they only care

To do the only thing that’s fair

And what is fair to them, God knows

Is that their land and money grows

So that is why they’ll sell us goods

From missile parts to parka hoods

And smile at global warming news

‘Cause they’re the ones who get to choose

 

 

Nostradamus, guest blogger, speaks elliptically, but only for effect, for he knows the future and the past, though he is unclear about the present. Nonetheless, the sage, the seer, the great one, sees the Persian Empire aglow as an Asian peninsula explodes, and a Syrian potentate expresses regrets as the sand beneath his feet turns to glass and the Afghan sky turns dark with flocks of man-made birds. 

 

 

Dear leader’s missiles will inflate

The danger faced by neighbor state

While mullahs watch the tension grow

And wonder when the thing will blow

 

The Pashtun border will be drawn

With Afghan leader as its pawn

Drones and worker bees will fly

And predators will fill the sky

 

Anointed one will now address

Syrian ophthalmologist to press

The Mid-East health and wonder why

They cannot both see eye to eye

 

 

The Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates again, to be repulsed by an on-board protection crew, and a few weeks ago pirates attacked a ship a thousand miles off the coast, far beyond their usual range, a case of Darwinian adaptation. Naval vessels and reconnaissance drones of many nations now patrol inshore, forcing the pirates to go farther afield than before. But the question remains, how do the pirates stay in business in light of constant patrols? The answer seems to be that some ship-owners are paying ransom money to the pirates to leave their ships alone. All well and good for those who pay, but what of those who don’t pay, whose crews are held captive for months or years? What happens to the mostly third world crews if they are not ransomed? Piracy is the national economy of Somalia, and the present quiet period cannot last. There will be a spike in piracy any time now, and you can bet the United States will be called on to end it once and for all. 

 

 

The world turns counter-clockwise when it’s viewed from outer blue

But only if you’re looking at North Pole

When viewed above the South Pole spinning clockwise is the view

So how can spacey travelers judge the whole?

You see how difficult it is to get someone to see

That pulling teeth is not the way to go

When that someone has interest in the way it ought to be

And pirates in their boardrooms run the show

The same with little people in their countries far and wide

They scream and holler that we’re never right

And yet they’re much content to go along just for the ride

As long as Uncle Sam provides the might

Do pirates in the boardroom pay the pirates far at sea

To leave their ships alone, a quid pro quo?

Of course they do, for it is only business by the fee

And we’re all in the business don’t you know

So yes one day we’ll clean the grinning pirates from their lairs

And set the captives free to ply their trade

But don’t expect our allies then to stand up on their chairs

And give our guys a great big accolade